A new section in this year’s Wisden is ‘Cricket and Blogs’, starting on page 1628. It’s written by blogger Jarrod Kimber, contributor to many a cricket discussion board under the alias of jrod, and author of When Freddie became Jesus.
My excitement at this new development soon turned to disappointment. There’s nothing wrong with the quality of the writing – as this post from his own blog demonstrates, jrod certainly has a way with words.
What grates is his choice of blogs. Is this really the best he could come up with? Most of the article is taken up with amy-cricket.blogspot.com and the bizarre and tedious ‘death’ of its writer. Another recommendation leftarmchinaman.blogspot.com hasn’t been updated since January.
It’s incestuous too. The blog of Kiwi test player Iain O’Brien (‘my matches, my thoughts, my head’), is apparently ‘a gold mine for cricket lovers’. It’s also a place where jrod flogs copies of his book, through an Amazon link that his friend O’Brien kindly provides.
I’d like to recommend the author’s own blog, the always entertaining cricketwithballs, but it doesn’t need my approbation – jrod even manages to lever in some shameless self-promotion.
‘Cricket and Blogs’ is a welcome addition to Wisden, but surely it can be done better than this.
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